


Texting a Friend

by zaffrin



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:47:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22280551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zaffrin/pseuds/zaffrin
Summary: O was just someone she could talk to - she never went into details but it was someone there, in her phone, who she could tell when they’d had a tough day, or complain to when she couldn’t figure out which part of the Tardis was making that weird clunking noise that had driven her crazy for weeks. And O replied with memes that made her laugh or praises that made her smile at her phone and shove it quickly in her pocket when one of her friends asked what she was grinning about.So, she still texts him.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 48
Kudos: 433





	Texting a Friend

The worst part about O turning out to be her lifelong enemy, wasn’t that he had succeeded in fooling her so thoroughly and continued on to try and kill her, her friends and the whole of the human race… - okay, that  _ was _ the worst part, but in fairness it was pretty standard for the Master and she’d dealt with all that in the end. No, the part that resonated the most, sat thick and uncomfortable between her hearts, was that she had lost her friend. 

They hadn’t had  _ much _ of a friendship, really, but O was somebody the Doctor had known for  _ years _ from her point of view, and somebody she felt like she could rely on. Funnily enough they hadn’t had much contact until a few months ago, when he had started to text her regularly and it became something of a habit - obviously did that on purpose too, knowing the time was coming for his plan to come to fruition, the bastard. He was just someone she could talk to - she never went into details but it was someone there, in her phone, who she could tell when they’d had a tough day, or complain to when she couldn’t figure out which part of the Tardis was making that weird clunking noise that had driven her crazy for weeks. And O replied with memes that made her laugh or praises that made her smile at her phone and shove it quickly in her pocket when one of her friends asked what she was grinning about. 

She thinks about those conversations a lot now, when her fam have wandered off to sleep and she’s left alone in the console room with her thoughts and nobody to casually talk to. She thinks about it and finds herself looking back through their messages, trying to reconcile the person she’d been talking to with the _ Master _ . She can’t. And that’s what makes it even worse, because if there’d been hints underlying all along, now she has hindsight, it would make it easier to accept, but their conversations were easy, light. He was… quite  _ funny - _ which wasn’t a word she would ever have used to describe her oldest enemy. She misses talking to him. 

So, she still texts him.

First she sends off a brief message: ‘ _ Hiya how’s it going? Saw something you’d have loved today.’ _ She’s certain the Master would have ditched the phone he’d been using to communicate with her as O now that it had no use, and the text could pass as having leaked through to the wrong timeline if he did receive it. But there was no reply - and O always replied. And so the Doctor texted him again, then again, gaining confidence with every unanswered message that he obviously had got rid of the phone. Of course he had. 

‘ _ Took the fam to pizza planet today, ten thousand and eighty nine toppings to choose from and they all went for pepperoni!’ _

_ ‘I had marshmallows and algae on mine, you should try it some time.’ _

_ ‘Met some really interesting aliens today, they looked just like that cat in that meme you sent me last month!’ _

_ ‘What you up to? Fam’s off at home for a bit, didn’t really feel like travelling by myself.’ _

_ ‘Isn’t it funny how staring into a black hole can make you start questioning your entire existence?’ _

_ ‘Bad day. Chased by monsters that turned out to be mutated humans on a future earth. My friends are upset.’ _

That most recent one that she fires off after their trip to Tranquility Spa when her fam have disappeared off to bed is followed by something that makes her jump and stare at her phone in surprise, hearts pounding. 

There’s a reply beneath her message. 

_ ‘Sounds like every day’s a bad day lately.’ _

She freezes, staring at the text on her phone for long minutes. How could he have replied? She’s been texting him for weeks he - she doesn’t even know where he is or if he’s even got back into this realm yet - unless her messages were sending through to an earlier time, when he was still O to her? Or - maybe somebody else just had the number now. 

‘ _ Who’s this?’  _ She finally types back with shaking fingers.

_ ‘You’re the one texting me, don’t you already know who it is?’ _

…  _ ‘O?’ _

_ ‘I can still be him if you want me to be baby.’ _

She sighs, hearts sinking.

‘ _ I don’t want to talk to you. Just assumed you’d have ditched this phone.’ _

_ ‘Why have you been messaging me then?’ _

She bites her lip, looking down at the screen. There isn’t really a lie that would work, so she opts for the truth, miserable enough today to speak it. 

‘ _ Because I miss my friend.’ _

_ ‘I’m right here.’ _

_ ‘No you’re not. O was my friend. You’re not O.’ _

_ ‘But I am,’  _ he texts back, and she swears she can  _ hear _ him laughing through the message. ‘ _ That was all me.’ _

_ ‘Yeah well. Being nice actually suits you. You should try it some time. Bye.’  _

She fully intends to delete his number and forget about the whole thing, when another message comes through quickly. 

‘ _ Don’t you want to talk? Sounded like you did.’ _

_ ‘Not to you!’  _ She scowls at her phone and fires off another quick text before he can reply; ‘ _ Why do you care anyway?’ _

_ ‘Come on Doctor,’  _ comes his reply, then a pause before another message. ‘ _ My best enemy’s had a bad day, what makes you think I wouldn’t want to hear about that?’ _

Huffing, the Doctor snaps her flip phone shut and shoves it in her pocket, turning to fiddle with the console and resolved to ignore it for the rest of the night. It vibrates against her hip. Then again. And again. 

“Ugh, what!?” She snaps out loud, yanking the phone out when it buzzes for the fourth time. She frowns at the succession of messages on the screen:

_ ‘Did one of your friends get eaten? _

_ Was it the old one? _

_ I so wish I’d killed him when I had the chance.  _

_ Or the pretty one, gods she was irritating.’ _

Another message comes through as she’s reading: ‘ _ Easy on the eyes though, I can see why you keep her around.’ _

The Doctors fingers are trembling with fury when she taps a message back. 

‘ _ Shut up about my friends.’ _

_ ‘Always did have a thing for pretty young girls didn’t you? And you always seem to manage to get them to follow you around like lost puppies, how do you do that?’ _

_ ‘It’s called being nice and having friends.’  _ She replies, seething at her phone. ‘ _ You wouldn’t know.’ _

_ ‘I’ve got you,’  _ comes the reply.

‘ _ I’m not your friend.’ _

_ ‘Yes you are.’ _

She frowns at the screen. 

‘ _ Tell me why you did it then?’  _ She's typed back before she can help herself. 

The long pause that follows tells her he knew exactly what she was referring to. 

‘ _ I had to.’ _

‘ _ That’s not an answer!’ _

_ ‘What, you expect me to tell you why I burned our planet to the ground over text?’ _

The Doctor seethes, nearly throwing her phone at the console in frustration, suppressed rage and heartbreak rising fast to the surface. 

‘ _ I don’t know why I’m even bothering to talk to you,’  _ she types back after a moment, fingers shaking angrily, ‘ _ I hate you.’ _

_ ‘Do you?’ _

_ ‘Yes. And stop smiling at your damn phone, you look like an idiot.’ _

_ ‘Touche my dear.’ _

_ ‘Also stop calling me that! And stop texting me!’ _

_ ‘I believe you’re the one who keeps texting me,’  _ he replies, followed by another, ‘ _ My dear.’ _

‘ _ Well I’m not texting you anymore. I’m deleting your number. Actually I’m blocking your number.’ _

_ ‘Wait!’ _

_ ‘What?’  _ She texts back, irritated that he can make her pander to him. 

There’s a pause that stretches on for a few minutes when her phone doesn’t light up with a reply, and she frowns at it, growing more and more impatient as she paces by the console. 

‘ _ Well?’  _ She finally caves and messages again. Another minute before a text comes through. 

‘ _ I did it because I didn’t have a choice. Once you know you’ll understand that.’ _

She swallows as she reads the message, and feels her throat grow tight and scrubs at her eyes. How could he say that? Liken what he’d done to their home planet to what she had been forced to -

‘ _ And no, I’m still not telling you.’ _

_ ‘Where are you anyway?’  _ She finds herself texting back, suddenly desperate for a distraction, anything to stop the rushing in her ears and the image of her beautiful red planet turned horrifically redder. 

‘ _ A bar.’ _

_ ‘Narrows it down,’  _ She taps back, rolling her eyes and sniffing hard. ‘ _ Got out the Kasaavin’s realm then?’ _

_ ‘Yes.’  _ Is all he replies to that and she finds a small smile coming to her lips. Still sore then. 

‘ _ Hope it didn’t take you too long.’ _

_ ‘Gloating doesn’t suit you Doctor.’ _

_ ‘Assuming you found your Tardis again too since you haven’t asked me where I parked it.’ _

_ ‘Yes. Just where you left it for me.’ _

_ ‘I didn’t leave it for you.’ _

_ ‘Yes you did. Otherwise you’d have thrown it through a supernova or parked it at the edge of the universe not pop it in San Francisco in the twenty first century.’ _

She bites her lip. ‘ _ It was where I picked mine up. Just couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of moving both Tardises.’ _

_ ‘Sure.’ _

She sighs. She’d used the same reasoning with herself - if she were to put the Master's Tardis somewhere difficult for him to obtain it would be tricky logistically with parking it and getting back to her own. It was a flimsy excuse; she could have figured out a way if she really wanted to. 

‘ _ You’re welcome,’  _ she texts back. 

‘ _ Don’t think that even begins to make up for what you did to me though,’  _ comes the hasty reply, then another text; ‘ _ You’re going to pay for that.’ _

_ ‘Looking forward to it,’  _ the Doctor replies dryly, not in the mood for his threats. 

There’s a pause before another message comes through, and when it does the Doctor can’t stop the surprised huff of laughter that escapes her when she opens it to see a little gif of two housecats fighting, one hitting the other and sending it flying off a table. 

Another text; ‘ _ You’re the one on the floor.’ _

_ ‘I gathered,’  _ she texts back, and finds herself pulling up her image search, quickly shooting off one of two crabs duelling with cutlery. 

‘ _ I remember that like it was yesterday.’  _ He replies, then another text. ‘ _ You haven’t changed a bit.’ _

She grins, shaking her head as she looks down at her phone, fully aware how bizarre this situation was. Exchanging memes with her oldest enemy, joking about themselves and their centuries old feud. Perhaps O’s sense of humour had a little of the Master in after all. 

She tells him as much, texting back quickly. ‘ _ So, you still do have a sense of humour under all that homicidal rage.’ _

_ ‘There’s more to me than the picture you paint for yourself.’ _

The Doctor bites her lip as she reads that last message, a depth to his words that she knows rings true, somewhere inside herself. Her phone buzzes again before she can reply. 

‘ _ I’m like an onion.’ _

Snorting again, she messages back; ‘ _ Please tell me you did not just make a Shrek reference.’ _

‘ _ One of the only worthwhile things those stupid humans you love so much ever did, make that movie.’ _

_ ‘I’m seeing a whole different side to you,’  _ she fires off with a teasing smile, but realises the message could read deeper than movie references. 

‘ _ It’s about time.’ _

The smile fades from her face, to be replaced with a frown as she reads those three words. Like she hadn’t  _ tried _ in the past - like she hadn’t given him chances over and over to be better, hoping, somewhat foolishly, that the friend she used to know was still buried inside there somewhere. 

She doesn’t want to get into that tonight. She’s  _ tired _ , and it had been a long day - and she realises suddenly that their conversation had taken her mind off what had happened today, and he’d somehow succeeded in lifting her mood just a little. She focuses on that, shoving aside the last comment as another message comes through. 

‘ _ Still missing your friend?’ _

She sighs, biting her lip as she looks down at her phone. 

‘ _ Not so much,’  _ she opts for honestly, drained enough to give it today.

‘ _ Admitting you actually like talking to me then?’ _

_ ‘I’ve always liked talking to you. When you’re not trying to kill anyone or rip apart planets.’ _

_ ‘That’s only on tuesdays.’ _

_ ‘Don’t joke about it.’ _

He doesn’t reply to that one, and the Doctor sets down her phone on the Tardis console as she braces her hands on it and drops head head. She feels… calmer, weirdly. She still hates him - she still won’t ever forgive him for all the awful things he’d done and tried to do over the centuries but she knows she cannot deny that they share a deep bond that can’t be broken - whether that bond be friendship, hate or something else. And he’s all she’s got left now - just like before, when she thought Gallifrey had been gone the first time, and he and she (or he, as the Doctor was then) were the only ones left of their kind. It makes her connection to him sit firmer inside her, lodged in her chest, something she’s unable to rid herself of even if she wanted to - and she isn’t certain she is. She never has been, that’s the problem. 

She can’t forgive him for what he’s done to their planet, but the Doctor also knows she can’t judge him, not fully, when she doesn’t know his reasoning considering she herself had committed the very same atrocity. The memories and thoughts make her chest tight again, and she forces them down before her head can go off spinning down a black hole again like it had so often these past few months. She thinks it’s helped though, talking to him like this. 

_ ‘You still there?’  _ She finds herself typing out when he still hasn’t responded after several minutes. 

A reply come through quickly.  _ ‘Yes.’ _

_ ‘Not gonna say anything else?’ _

There’s a long pause before the next message And she thinks he isn’t going to reply, when finally her phone buzzes again and she hastily opens the message.

_ ‘Send nudes.’ _

She deletes his number. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Just a little pointless thought I had, needed to get down. I have something a bit more substantial on the way soon so look out for that! Kisses x


End file.
